and from itv�*s point of view, they'll be very happy that they can get these negative headlines, get the programme out of the news and get back to normal. and that's what's going to be the future. manchester city have won the english premier league for the third time in a row. this was the winning moment when the team found they had secured the title thanks to arsenal's 1—0 defeat at nottingham forest. man city will have the opportunity to celebrate their ninth english league title on monday when they play chelsea at home. the team, managed by pep guardiola, has played exciting football throughout the season. a government source has confirmed that the home secretary, suella braverman, asked civil servants for advice on arranging a private speed awareness course. ms braverman was caught speeding last summer when she was attorney general. the bbc understands that an adviser was asked to organise a one—to—one session but ms braverman was told that wouldn't be possible. the source rejected suggestions

she breached the ministerial code. the supply of a drug to treat symptoms of menopause is being restricted by the uk government because of shortages. pharmacists are being told to dispense only two months�* worth of capsules of utrogestan, which is a form of progesterone. the order was issued by the department of health, which says it will ensure more women can continue to access the medication they need. stay with us here on bbc news. now on bbc news, amol rajan interviews: piers morgan. for over 30 years, piers morgan has been a loud and polarising fixture in our culture, joining the ranks of the rich, famous, revered and reviled that he chronicled in his early career as a reporter. just 28 years old when he was appointed editor of one of the world's biggest newspapers by the media mogul rupert murdoch, morgan was a giant of british tabloids —

and he's got the scars to prove it. i don't get on with piers morgan. so, yeah, i punched him. let me see. well, that's what the scar is there. that scar? that line across your forehead? yeah, it's the clarkson scar. so how has he survived a turbulent career that's included a high—profile sacking, falling ratings and a dramatic walk—out? do you still pray? i do. at particular times? yeah. i mean, probably like everybody else, when i feel like i need a prayer. what's behind the thirst for fame that led to him becoming a tv star on both sides of the atlantic? and has he spent a career fighting for the truth... i don't think you can have, in a free society, purely positive press about anybody if you know alternative things are going on. ..or has journalistic integrity been overshadowed by his hunger for scoops and attention? have you ever hacked a phone? no. did phone hacking ever take place during your editorship of the mirror? this time, i'm asking the questions.

good to see you, piers. thank you very much for doing this. it's been a long time coming. and i've put in a lot of work, i'm very excited about this. that worries me. how you feeling? i quite like being interviewed, but as i'm sure you would understand, it's easier being there than it is being here. so i always quite enjoy it as a crackling energy being the subject of it. but you're not in control. you're not in control. when you're an interviewer and you're used to being in control it's always slightly unnerving when it shifts the other way. how do i get the best out of an interview with you? is it softly—softly? is it hard as nails? or is it somewhere in the middle, an iron fist in a velvet glove? it's probably a bit of both. i mean, i'm not afraid of being asked tough questions because i asked them myself — if you don't like it, don't dish it out. one of the things you like doing is asking people to describe themselves in five words. how would you describe yourself in five words?

confident. resilient. thick—skinned. any negatives in there? i'll come to those. i don't... are you a narcissist or what? i don't think a narcissist... well, i mean, maybe a little bit. maybe. certainly, i've got a healthy ego and maybe it occasionally strays into narcissism. do i like stuff to be about me? probably. do i like being the centre of attention? absolutely. do i love stirring up controversy and being at the centre of debate? yes. do i like trending worldwide over my opinions? absolutely. why? do i like winding up the type of people that i would travel continents to avoid? yes. do i care? not really. because when i walk around the streets, it's nothing like twitter. if you walked around with me — we're not going to do this, by the way — but if we walked around for a few hours, you would be staggered by, a, the number of people who come up, of all types, but also that it's universally positive. there are some people, probably a lot of people, who think you are an egotistical, bullying oaf.

butjust to keep the trolls happy, which i know you're always very keen to do, when was the last time you were kind? or is that too damaging for the brand? it is a bit. look, i don't... look, i think that people that worked with me, i think, over the years, probably would not categorise my personality in the way of a bullying oaf. i don't think that's ever been how people who work with me would categorise me. i think that i have people who worked with me a very long time — some are in this room — i think if i was like that, they wouldn't have worked for me. i always try and treat people i work with with respect and kindness actually. and obviously to family and to friends i try and be a good friend and be kind to them, but i'm not going to run around all day pretending to be mother teresa with a fake halo on my head. and i see so many people in the public eye, who i know well, whose image, which they painstakingly prop up, is completely at odds with the reality of the person they are. i'd rather be a pleasant surprise

to people than what i see in a lot of those fakes, which is a bitter disappointment. in march 2021, morgan certainly did surprise his audience when he walked off good morning britain. sorry. can't do this. take me inside the mind of piers morgan as these events... that's not a place you want to find yourself. have a look at this, would you? 0k. ah, yes. you don't like meghan markle. you've made it so clear a number of times on this programme... his walk—out came after criticism from the weather presenter alex beresford, who'd come on the show to defend meghan markle, the duchess of sussex, someone morgan had criticised over a recent interview about her time in the royal family. and i understand that you've got a personal relationship with meghan markle, or had one, and she cut you off. she's entitled to cut you off if she wants to. has she said anything about you since she cut you off? i don't think she has. but yet you continue to trash her. ok, i'm done with this. no, no, no.

sorry. do you know what? that's pathetic. no, no, no. see you later. good old alex. do you regret walking out? um... in a way. because i did go back after ten minutes, so it wasn't like i walked off into the sunset as a lot of people seem to think. yeah, i do, actually. i think it was a bit stupid to do that. i think that the context of it is probably worth just pointing out, which was the morning before i lost my rag about watching this whine—a—thon with oprah winfrey, which meghan and harry had done. in the interview with winfrey, the duchess had claimed she had felt suicidal, but her pleas for help were ignored by the palace. morgan dismissed her story as lies. who did you go to? what did they say to you? i'm sorry, i don't believe a word she says, meghan markle. well, that's a pathetic reaction... i wouldn't believe it if she read me a weather report. and the fact that she's fired up this onslaught against our royal family, i think is contemptible. now, these were opinions immediately countered, as always, by susanna reid,

my co—presenter, who disagreed with me and believed all the claims, and by most of the guests we had, actually. so it was a good old ding—dong show and i felt absolutely fitted the remit of what i'd been brought to do at good morning britain, which was stir debate, express my honestly held opinion and be challenged by guests that came on. but, and there's a big but here, as the day went on, the mob on twitter grew, and it was all, if i didn't believe meghan markle, i must be a racist. it had nothing to do with her skin colour. my criticism of her never has done. then the mental health charities piled in as well. and because i didn't believe her claims about going to the palace and saying she was feeling suicidal and they said she couldn't get treatment, i said ijust can't believe that conversation would have happened and we've never seen any evidence for that. i also was denying her claims, denying her truth. amid this tension, morgan says alex beresford contacted him and asked to come on the show the next day to contribute to the debate. morgan wasn't expecting the harsh criticism that followed.

i don't mind a guest doing that, but i do object to someone who had asked to come on the show, is on the team, who then makes a very personal attack on me, and so, in that moment, i thought, there's two things are going to happen here. either i'm going to completely lose my rag and do something i regret or i'm going to go and walk off. what would you have done that you'd regret? i don't like to think about what i'd have done, but i was certainly looking at him thinking, "yeah, i think i'd "better leave the room." and just for the record, i think he was a treacherous little prick, so he can say what he likes about me, and he can absolutely have his right to his opinion. that is my opinion about him. why don't you show a bit of generosity and a bit of an open heart? why don't you think it'd be nice to have a conversation with him? why don't you invite him onto your talktv show? i've got no interest in talking to him because i think what he did was deliberately treacherous to a colleague, and ijust don't think that's acceptable. you know what your critics, not just alex beresford, what your critics online say, which is they say you're obsessed with meghan markle and that your criticism of her veers towards — if not racism,

which you deny, and i can understand why you deny that — it veers towards misogyny? why? because she's female? what about my criticism of prince harry? it's beenjust as — just as critical, if not worse. let me tell you what ayesha hazarika, the radio presenter, a former labour adviser, has said. she said, "mostly when he," piers morgan, "is needling you, "there's a slight glint in his eye. "but when he was fighting about meghan, "there was something authentically angry "and he seemed quite personally affected by meghan markle. "they had a meeting. "he was sort of besotted by her. "she sort of dropped him as a friend." sorry... let me finish the quote. "they had a meeting. "he was sort of besotted by her. "she sort of dropped him as a friend. he felt very, very scorned." that's what she says. what do you say to that? i think the word besotted is ludicrous. let's be clear. you've written an awful lot about her. she's become quite a big figure in your life. some people would say that your career has

reached new heights, certainly financially, off the back of your fight with her. i owe it all to meghan markle. all to meghan. thank you, if you're watching, thanks, meg. honestly, i appreciate it. listen. the truth about meghan markle is, i met her once, right? i had no besotted feelings towards meghan markle at all. i met her once. my wife was going to come across the square to the pub where we met but decided to stay in and watch game of thrones. and i came back and i said, "oh, she's very nice, "that woman from suits." we all love watching suits. she reached out to me when i followed her on twitter, along with four other stars of suits, and immediately messaged me saying what a big fan of mine she was, blah, blah, blah. whatever. i was very supportive of meghan markle and harry right to the point of their wedding. you can go back and check everything that was written — very supportive. for a long time after she ghosted me and then at the wedding, it was really weird. only one person on her family turned up, on either side of herfamily. this is very strange. so this seemed to be somebody who likes to cut a lot of people off. morgan claims it was the duchess�*s deteriorating relationship with herfather, alleged hypocrisy over climate change and she and prince harry's toxic

relationship with the press that led him and sections of the media to drop much of their support. but the idea this was motivated, certainly in my case, by any personal animosity to meghan markle is completely untrue. i didn't have any. i mean, i quite liked her. the same day morgan walked off his show, he quit good morning britain. itv, whose ceo is dame carolyn mccall, said at the time he had decided to leave. morgan has since claimed he was forced out for refusing to apologise for an honestly held opinion. i've spoken, as you know, you know i've got very good sources. i've spoken to several of your colleagues on that show. you know what they say? they say where piers went too far is not saying that he doesn't believe meghan, you can do that, that's fine, and he may well have been vindicated on that. where you went too far — and this is their view, not mine, i'm impartial — their view is that you seemed to belittle the mental health struggles of someone who said they'd been suicidal. and at a time when itv as a company

was committed to really expressing a view that they want to support people who are going through mental health difficulty, that's something they couldn't tolerate. ok, let me answer that. so i get asked on the monday evening by an itv executive, senior level, "could you just clarify your thoughts "on mental health? "because the mob on twitter is saying that you've "belittled her mental health." isaid, "sure, yeah, of course, i didn't mean that at all." so the next morning, if you go back, you'll see that for over a minute i clarify my thoughts on mental health, and i was told that's the end of that matter, don't worry about it. that had nothing to do with why i left. the reason i left is that meghan markle wrote personally to carolyn mccall and demanded i lose myjob. i know that as a fact and i was told you either apologise or you've got to leave. so i left. so whatever itv may be saying to you or anybody at itv wants to spin, that is what happened. and i think that's a perfect example of the cancel culture that those in the woke brigade

think doesn't exist. so i think the whole thing was ludicrous, and i was very pleased that ofcom, in their lengthy and well—considered ruling five months later, ended up by concluding it would have been a chilling infringement of my rights to free speech to not let me have that opinion. an itv spokesperson told us... morgan's forthright views have made him one of the most controversial and high profile media figures in the world, and his relish in sharing those views can be traced back to his childhood. you were born piers stefan o'meara in guildford. your biological dad died when you were just 11 months old. you went to a private school and then were wrenched out to go to a comp. what class did you feel that you belonged to growing up? i mean, classless, really. i mean, when you live in a sussex village, i lived in a village called fletching. my parents ran the country pub.

the griffin inn. yeah, fantastic pub. i was there last week. but the great thing about pubs was they're completely egalitarian, they're kind of classless. you'd have the lord of the manor next to the local carpenter. and so you actually grow up in an atmosphere of classlessness really. and people from all mixes, all classes would alljust chatter in a weird form of equality. can you stand your round and put up an argument? and i, as i progressed into my teens, would go to my local pub with all my mates and they'll all tell you i was exactly the same then — i was an argumentative bastard. i've heard you say that you weren't really affected by the death of your biological dad. your mum remarried the man you call dad. yeah. i wonder if you know that a remarkable proportion of successful people have lost a parent young, and the theory is that ambition and drive comes from a kind of existential dread. you've got to do something with your life. you've got to make something of your life cos you might not be around for very long. and i note that your twitter

biography says, "live every day "like it's your last, because one day you'll be right." mm. where does your ambition come from? your drive, your zeal? well, i think... i don't know. it's an interesting thing you've just said. i mean, i don't know that applies to me necessarily. certainly, when i've interviewed people, i've always felt that the absolutely unconditional love of one parent can be enough to propel people to great things. but my mother's been an unbelievable rock in my life. i mean, there's no question. and i've put her through the mill, let's be clear, you know, a lot of very high profile ups and downs, and she's always been there — as have a lot of other people in my family, and a lot of very good friends of mine. but, ultimately, number one would be my mother. you knew from a very early age that you wanted to be famous. "i wanted to be a star," you said, and you signed autographs to yourself as a child. why did you want to be famous? it's something... there seemed like something so fantastically exciting about fame and famous people, and the celebrity culture was really exploding as i was growing up through the �*70s and �*80s. and the people — i used to love

reading the newspapers, it was pretty weird, i was seven or eight and devouring the daily mail, so if you want something to blame, you can start with that. but i used to love reading the papers and reading the headlines and trying to understand the stories from a very young age. so it was always in me, this sort ofjournalistic streak, i think, and a love of news and a sort of craving for information. i loved to be first with the gossip, whatever it was, the stories. and then i used to write to prime ministers, i used to write to celebrities, and i've got bookfuls of this stuff. all the prime ministers... asking them for their autograph? yeah, or asking them for whatever, their views on something. i've got a letter from margaret thatcher congratulating me for winning a debate against the campaign for nuclear disarmament at my school in lewes. because you wrote to thatcher? well, i wrote to her to tell her i'd won a debate against a cnd campaigner and she wrote back a really nice letter congratulating me on this. and it was all that kind of thing where i had a lot of interaction with the rich, powerful and famous just as a kid.

after a few years working on local papers, morganjoined and soon ran the sun's showbusiness column, which was called bizarre. most days, he could be found on its pages standing next to a celebrity, and he was starting to become one. audience claps cheering hooter at 28 years old, he was appointed editor of one of the biggest—selling newspapers on the planet, the news of the world. what kind of editor were you? i was like the third or fourth youngest member of the entire news of the world staff. so that's a strange place to start. i had a lot of work to prove myself. and i realised early on that the only way to do that was to break the big stories. and he did. two years of scoops and awards followed with morgan becoming a vocal defender of the role of the tabloid press. i don't think you can have, in a free society, purely positive

press about anybody, if you know alternative things are going on. this rising star was soon attracting the attention of rival media groups. within two years, he'd left to edit the mirror. his coverage of 9/11 brought accolades, and he campaigned fiercely against the iraq war. all the while, he enjoyed rare access to power and privilege. it was a crazy era. crazy era — power, sex, scandal, sleaze. and you were, as your diaries have it, the ultimate insider. you know, you're in number 10, you're in number 11, you're at parties and indeed palaces. and you've written about the occasions where you had lunch with princess diana, who you found bewitchingly beautiful, i think it's fair to say. the thing i don't understand is, what did she want out of lunch with you? amol, come on. it must be obvious. um... i think that, like everyone in public life, doesn't matter whether you're a royal, you're a politician, you're a tennis player, you're a singer, whatever it is,

you want to have the best media press coverage you can get — and diana was a good example of somebody who did influence me, actually very effectively. and she did it very specifically. and she said, you know, there's a lot of pictures now coming from paparazzi that are not part of national newspapers, but they're taking pictures to you of me looking distressed or crying or whatever it may be, and it's being caused by them. and she showed me some video footage that she had of paparazzi behaving really badly, but there was a kind of unlicensed group of paparazzi running around making her life hell, no question. and i said, "here's what we're going to do, we'rejust not "going to run those kind of pictures again." and i said, "here's also what i'll do. "i'll ring you when we have a particularly sensitive story "and i'll tell you and we'll talk about it." later, morgan got wind of a story about the princess attending a clinic for people with eating disorders and sharing her own experience of bulimia. morgan called her and they agreed

to work on the story together, with him sending her an early draft to amend. i did all the right things and she was incredibly grateful. i go to bed, i have a glass of wine. i'm celebrating, the scoop bomb goes off, everyone�*s chasing it. it's first seven pages of the mirror — diana and bulimia, the truth in her own words, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and i know it's100% accurate because she's the one who told me, she's my source. and then about nine o'clock in the morning comes a press association snap. diana, princess of wales, is deeply upset over intrusive revelations in today's daily mirror about a private visit to an eating disorder clinic. ithought, "sorry, what?!" so i rang the palace and i could hear her in the background. and i think it was patrickjephson was her press guy, he went, "the princess just felt on reflection after sleeping on it "that because it was a private visit, "if she didn't say

that she didn't endorse this, "then she couldn't make other private visits." i said, "oh, did she? "why didn't she say that yesterday before i put it all over my front "page with her permission and her approval, "and after an hour—long interview?" i said, "you can tell her what i'm going to do. "tomorrow morning's front page is going to have, front page, "me revealing my source, and i'm going to do "a phone—line where you can listen to the interview — "and people are going to be slightly surprised because they're "going to hear diana, princess of wales, talking did you do it? no. why? because i heard some muttering and then i heard, "the princess is sure that you won't do that, piers, "and on reflection, you'll think about what she said and the precise "wording of her statement and you'll understand the reason she did it." you got lobbied! no. she successfully... hang on. you talk about silencing, she silenced you. when i was listening to you tell that story just there, i thought,

what a fantastically smart, brave, campaigning thing that would be for a journalist to do. but instead, this princess, whose beauty you were bewitched by, mutters in the background to her press secretary and you get nobbled. here's what happened. you coward. well... i took a view in the moment. oh, did you? well, tell me if i'm wrong. i had access to the biggest star on the planet. she had stiffed me on this. no question. she didn't deny anything that we did. she just said she was upset by the intrusion into the private visit. so we took a whack as a paperfor intrusion. but we still got the scoop and we still sold buckets of papers. and you kept the relationship. and i kept the relationship, which carried on until she died. i don't criticise what diana was doing. she was the biggest star in the world with the biggest amount of media intrusion... ..into her life. no question. i never deny that. i don't doubt it. but she would court people like me. she would talk regularly to people like me. she would blatantly stiff me, as she did over the eating disorder story.

she would deliberately manipulate the papers so that she could get one over camilla. and i wonder when i hear harry, for example, talking in the way he does about media intrusion into his mother's life and his life, whether he knew the half of it. i doubt he did. he was only... how old was he, 12 when she died? i doubt he knew that she was doing all this. but it wasn't all lunches with princesses or dinners with prime ministers. morgan still spent plenty of time filling his paper with stories about the private lives of other celebrities, likejeremy clarkson — something clarkson didn't take kindly to. i don't get on with piers morgan. editor of the daily mirror. yeah, the editor of the daily mirror. and so, yeah, i punched him. yeah. audience laughs. it was at this pub, where morgan had his only meeting with the duchess of sussex, that he and clarkson eventually ended their feud, one of many that morgan has had in his career.

cos i've bust my finger. look, can you see that? oh, yes. so you have. actually broken it. you have. cos i've never hit anyone before and i did it wrong, you were saying. audience laughs. where did he hit you? let me see. well, that's what the scar is there. hang on, that scar, that line across your forehead. yeah, it's the clarkson scar. did you mean to have a feud with him? ordid hejust... it just sort of launched out of nowhere? did you find that when he was going at you publicly, you quite enjoyed it? and it's one of those kind of battles from which everyone wins? yes. just like my feuds with, like, madonna, cherie blair, ian hislop. audience laughs. he is charming, isn't he? don't try the popularity line with me, hislop. why? — do you like him? does anybody actually like... ? cheering. but why do you bother? why do you bother? most people in this pub don't go through their life thinking, "i'm going to have a fight with that person, a fight with that one. "i'm going to trade insults with that person and that person." because it's fun. why do you bother? it's fun.

what's fun about having a feud? it's fun for me. but there's a side of morgan's newspaper career that is much more serious with consequences that could leave another scar. and that's phone hacking. it's already led to prison sentences for journalists. .. ..the closure of the news of the world... ..and the leveson public inquiry. prince harry is among several celebrities now taking other tabloids to court, including the mirror, which morgan edited for nine years. have you ever hacked a phone? no. did phone hacking ever take place during your editorship of the mirror? not that i'm aware of. cos what you're not saying there is, "there is no phone hacking at the mirror." to be clear, originally i said i've never hacked a phone, i've never told anyone to hack a phone, and no story has ever been published in the mirror in my time from hacking of a phone. and then somebody pointed out, "well, you can only know the first two things for sure." yeah. all i can talk to is what i know about my own involvement. i've never hacked a phone.

i wouldn't even know how. jeremy paxman told the leveson inquiry that you taught him how to hack a phone. i've been asked to ask you about a lunch at trinity mirror on the 20th of september 2002. first of all, do you have any recollection of that occasion? there were two reasons. i remembered the lunch. one was that it was so unusual to be invited into such a bestiary. - the second of which was that i i was really struck by something that piers morgan said. he then explained that the way- to get access to people's messages was to go to the factory default - setting and press either 000 or 1234 and that if you didn't. put on your own code, his words, "you're a fool." now, i don't know whether he's talking about... - whether he was making this up, l was making up the conversation, but it was clearly something that he was familiar with. i and |. .. | i wasn't. to what extent does that

undermine your defence? well, its complete bullshit. and no offence to your former colleague or your predecessor —— well, its complete bleep. and no offence to your former colleague or your predecessor on university challenge, but i told him to be careful about phone security because there was a new thing doing the rounds of people, if you hadn't changed your factory setting, you tapped in four zeros or whatever it was, and you could hear people's messages. but that would be like if there was a spate of muggings out there in the king's road right now and i warn you, "by the way, i've heard there's a spate of muggings. be careful." so i was completely honest about it. i was open. it was in front of my chairman, it was in front of the bt boss, in front of all these people. and i don't like actually to be too critical of him given his condition now, and i watched the documentary, it's very moving, recently, but on that he really bleep. let's state some facts for some people that don't know the detail and haven't been over this. there have been dozens of civil hacking cases against the mirror group and we know at least five who have been awarded

damages for phone hacking by the mirror during the period when you were editor. that's gazza, sadie frost, shane richie, luke taggart and the tv producer robert ashworth. now those are the ones we know about cos they came out in court, but most cases so far against mirror group newspapers have been settled. when you say mirror group newspapers... well, trinity. yes. i only worked for the daily mirror. sure. but let's be clear. i only worked for the daily mirror. i never had any responsibility for the sunday mirror or any other, or the sunday people or any other titles. no responsibility at all. so when we go through all these cases being settled, important to remember what my responsibility was. in 2015, the trinity mirror group apologised for historic phone hacking and said such behaviour represented an unwarranted and unacceptable intrusion into people's lives. you must see... i hear what you're saying. i agree with that, by the way. sure. i think phone hacking's completely wrong and shouldn't have been happening and it was lazy journalists being lazy. but there's evidence that it happened while you were editor. there's no evidence that i knew anything about any of it. i never told anybody to hack a phone and nobody on the daily mirror of the hundreds and hundreds, thousands possibly, ofjournalists who worked with me on the daily mirror have ever even been arrested in connection with phone hacking.

so there are lots of civil things going on. but as you know, the bar for that is a lot lower than it is for any criminal action. yes, we can keep going over and over and over this, but the police, you know, were pretty thorough in their investigation. what i would say is i have not been involved in any of these settlements at all. nobody has even asked me for my opinion, which i think says it all. but does it stretch credulity for an editor as hands on, as energetic, as intricately involved in the paper as you were, to say this stuff was going on but i didn't know about it? i didn't. so i don't care whether it stretches people's credulity or not. but i've been a newspaper editor, far less successful than you. and you knew everything that all yourjournalists were up to 24/7? no, but i think it was my responsibility to make sure that the big, big stories i was happy with with the mechanism by which they came about. i made it crystal clear to myjournalists... your news editor, your features editor, all these people. ..that we operate within the law. and we had a group of very, very good lawyers who ensure that would happen.

now, can you be absolutely certain what everyone�*s doing all the time? of course you can't. we had hundreds and hundreds of people in the newsroom, but i can be certain about what i knew and what i did. and no—one has ever produced anything to contradict what i'm saying. but isn't it the most basicjob of a newspaper editor to be absolutely satisfied that nothing illegal is going on? yeah. but how can you be? how can you be? i worked at a newsroom with 400 people. you're not telling me when you ran the independent, you knew what they're all up to all the time? i can tell you, when i ran the independent, no—one hacked a phone. how do you know? i'm absolutely confident. look, i can only comment with any confidence about what i knew and what i did. i mean, the police launched a thorough and lengthy investigation for a number of years. they interviewed me twice. nothing. so, i mean, i don't really feel the need to keep either talking about it or defending myself, in all honesty. let me ask you... i don't mind doing it for this interview. sure. but there comes a point when either people need to show me

what they think i did or stop accusing me of things i didn't do. prince harry is taking legal action against several tabloid newspaper groups. his legal actions include legal actions which concern claims about your record at the mirror. are you worried? no, not at all. most people, piers, would find that quite concerning. i couldn't give a monkey's cuss. the idea that... you couldn't give a monkey's cuss about the fact that... ? why don't you walk around and ask 100 members of the public, "do you have any sympathy for prince harry when it comes to privacy now?" zero. this guy, he's got no time for his family. he comes all the way, 5,000 miles, this eco warrior, to come and lecture the media once again about invasion of privacy and intrusion. and yet he's the biggest invader of privacy in royal history. prince harry has just written a 400—odd page book. he reveals private conversations with his brother and his father at his grandfather's funeral. think about that for a moment. he reveals text messages from the princess of wales and so on and so on and so on.

all the things he's railed against the media for doing over the years, he's done with bells on. so, no, i'm not going to take in lectures from him, and i don't give a damn what actions he wants to take. good luck to you. but, honestly, it's like being lectured on the truth by donald trump. alleged hacking isn't the only controversy that surrounds morgan's newspaper career. after he bought shares in a company that the next day was tipped by his investment columnists, he faced a four year investigation and intense media scrutiny before being cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. but it was the next scandal that cost him his job. let me be clear for people who don't remember, you were fired from the mirror in 2004 for publishing photos of british soldiers allegedly abusing iraqi civilians. and it looks like they were fake, but they may not have been. you were frog marched out of the building. were you unfairly treated? i think so, yeah. yeah. because of the manner

in which you were sacked or because you think that those photos may not have been so fake after all? a, because i don't think we know the truth even today about those pictures. i believe there are actually investigations going on which might shed some new light on it, so we'll wait and see. yes, i lost myjob over it. yes, it was a huge scandal. yes, the public belief is i faked those pictures deliberately, as if i'd do that when my own brother was on the front line in basra. of course i didn't. did we believe they were genuine? absolutely. do i think to this day there are lots of unanswered questions about them? yes. but more importantly, did the story that went with those pictures, was it ever denied and did it happen? it was never denied and i'm certain it happened. so there were troops and actually they went to court martial, some of them, from that regiment. so they were bad apples in a particular regiment that we were targeting with our investigation, who ended up being court—martialled, and their commanding officer said his men had behaved like a pack of wild animals. i'm very struck by the fact that quite often you have, as that kipling poem suggests, you have turned disaster into the prelude to triumph.

and what happened in 2004 is you'd got sacked by the mirror, you were sacked by them, but you'd signed a very handsome contract for your diaries. and then simon cowell comes along. simon took me out for lunch and he had an idea for a talent show. and then a few weeks later, i got a text from simon, "i've sold the rights to nbc and they want to repackage it "as america's got talent." he said, "i can't be on it because of american idol, "so i was trying to think who's as obnoxious and annoying as me, "and judgmental, and your name has immediately sprung to mind." anyway, next thing i'm flown out. hired this aston martin, drove through the melrose gates, i'm going through movie lots, and i park outside and there's my trailer and there's david hasselhoff�*s. and then simon pulls up in his ferrari outside my trailer and he comes in and wejust both burst out laughing. i went, "how did this happen?" and hejust laughed and he said, "look," he said, "here's the deal with thisjudging thing. "you can get away with anything, but you have to be "right 80% of the time." and the other thing is, he said, "most shows here don't work."

he said, "3 out of 30 work, of new shows launched. it's brutal. "so we've got no idea if this is going to work. "this mightjust all blow up, right? "so enjoy every minute. "but, you know, i'd book your return ticket." and we laughed. but it did work. the show went to number one in america, lifting morgan to a new level of fame. by 2011, after becoming a tv star on both sides of the atlantic, morgan took the place of veteran news presenter larry king at cnn, getting his own nightly show. he lasted three years before leaving amid falling ratings. his roller—coaster career was again going through another dip. trust and loyalty are a big dealfor you. i know they are. and you've got a thing about calling people when the chips are down and respecting people who call you when you've fallen from grace. how many people do you trust absolutely? yeah, it's a good question. i'll ask other people. i mean, actually, quite a lot. imean... quite a large number of my family. i wouldn't say we're mafioso

when it comes to loyalty, but we're not far off it. it's like if you're a morgan, you're a morgan. i've got a lot of friends, a lot of friends from journalism, a lot of friends from my village. some of them have known me 45 years. they know where all the bodies are buried. they're notjudgmental. they don't care. it's not a world that they occupy. they find the world of media and celebrity pretty shallow and vacuous. and they're absolutely right. and think we're all full of ourselves and think what we do is way too important. and i think they're right. so that's probably why they're great for me. after leaving cnn and spending six years at good morning britain, morgan eventually signed a three year deal with media titan rupert murdoch, said to be worth tens of millions of pounds. what do you owe rupert murdoch? everything. to me, rupert murdoch is the greatest media figure of my lifetime, possibly ever, in terms of his boldness, his vision, in terms of his reach

around the world. and for me, personally, the opportunity he gave me when he made me editor of his biggest selling newspaper in the world, aged 28, was an unbelievable opportunity. and actually to go back and work for him again nearly 30 years later has been a fantastic thing for me because i felt like i owed him one. his critics in the uk say thatjust because somebody is rich and funds journalism, they shouldn't have the kind of access and influence that he, like other proprietors, has had for decades. isn't there something in that? no, i think it's perfectly normal that politicians would want to have relationships with media figures, particularly those who own media. it's not exclusive to rupert murdoch. it happens with lord rothermere and others. there's a lot of interaction between the media and political power, but i've never seen rupert murdoch chase that power. the power chases him. i've been at parties with him where literally it's bees around a honeypot, of cabinet ministers all trying to get a tiny bit

of face time with rupert. and it's comical to watch. and i can only say when i ran a newspaper for him for two years, he never, ever once directed me about any political position of what the paper should be doing, of a story that he wanted to be placed in the paper, or any of that kind of thing. his interference was literally... i mean, just nonexistent. he loved to talk about the stories. he loved to talk about my feeling about what was happening politically, who i thought was on the up, on the down — but there's a big difference between that and direct proprietorial interference. and i had none of it. i can only go on my experience. morgan's deal includes a book, opinion columns and his own global tv show, piers morgan uncensored, which airs in the uk on the talktv network. but is it news or noise? a channel fighting for free speech or yet another platform for morgan to fuel division? something some claim he's been doing on twitter since 2010.

what we're talking about is the culture wars. and there are a lot of people, including yourself perhaps, that say that in many ways you are the culture wars made flesh. i can see the glint in your eye. the what? the culture wars made flesh. yeah. you've got millions of followers. you're trending on twitter basically every day. you love it. and these people say it's not just people like you, it actually is you, piers morgan, who is driving the polarisation and the frenzy that makes public life these days... what a load of bleep. here's what the culture wars are really about. it's about this... listen, i am more liberal than not, i would say. i'm a centrist, slightly veering to the liberal left. i was editor of the daily mirror for nearly ten years, a left—wing newspaper, right? i'm certainly not right wing. and yet i get called a right wing head—banger, a gammon, a culture warrior and all these things. but actually what's happened is that the woke side of the left have gone so nuts that it makes even, to my mind, reasonable people

like me with reasonable opinions who are liberal about many things, tolerant about many things... i'm not a sexist, i'm not transphobic, i'm not racist. i'm not any of those things. but when you have a situation where people likejk rowling get hounded, abused and threatened literally with death threats, for having the audacity to raise an eyebrow about a six foot three inch biological male swimmer destroying women's records in a swimming pool in america because nobody dares to stand up and go, "well, hang on. "this is ridiculous. what is going on here?" that's a culture war started by the people who do that and who support that, not by people like me that then defend reality. and so who's starting the culture war? i don't mind admitting i'm involved in it and i'm waging it because i think i'm defending the rights of what i would call common sense and reality, and realfairness and real equality. you've spoken to me in the past

about the severe damage that twitter�*s doing to public life. you've kind of raised it now about the potential damage. it can. the fact that this tiny minority on twitter make most of the noise, the fact that abuse has gone mainstream, the fact that conspiracy theories are now mainstream, the fact that outrage and lies are spread incredibly fast. the fact that journalists�* sense of what actually matters to people is being completely warped, cos they spend all day, every day in this chatroom forjournalists. don't you ever think if twitter�*s such a big problem, if it's doing such damage and corrosion, maybe you shouldn't feed it so much? well, again, it comes back to how you think i'm feeding it. i could go through all my tweets in the last ten years, and i would simply ask people who think that i'm constantly spewing terrible things, what is it that you think is so terrible? i don't actually have really offensive or wrong opinions. most of mine are what most people think. don't you think what you've written about in your book wake up, cancel culture, what some people

call the great awokening, mightjust be about to pass? if you look at the reaction, for instance, to this controversy about roald dahl. we're winning the war. if you look at what happened with roald dahl, with roald dahl, when some people are saying it should be edited so that you're allowed to say the word "enormous" but not allowed to say the word "fat". ludicrous. but the reaction to that suggested to me that a lot of people, even on the left of politics, who you might have thought of as being part of the cancel culture, thought this is not a good use of time or brain cells. it's not that. it's actually because the woke worm has turned. the war against the wokery — and by wokery i don't mean what woke originally was intended to mean, which was a raised awareness of social and racial injustice. i've studied all the history, i've put it all in my book, you know, and i made the point that i am woke by that distinction. but what it's become is a form of fascism. it's become a mind—set of people on the hard left who just want to basically have everybody conform to their worldview. isn't fascism slightly overstating it? it's not, because it's the same ideology. look, there's fascism in theory and there's fascism in practice.

and aren't you again going too far when you say that people who are part of cancel culture or woke are fascist? no. let's be clear about what we're talking about with fascists. fascism in practice led to the holocaust. we're talking about whether or not you can use the word "enormous". i think it is a form of fascism. a fascist ideology is where you want people to conform to your way of thinking or there will be punishment. we can talk about degree of punishment, and i agree, obviously, if one leads to the holocaust... censoring roald dahl is not the holocaust. no, no. but what has been going on in the way that public figures in particular have been treated by the woke mob over issues has been a form of fascism. it hasn't led to the extremity that fascism has gone historically, but it's the same mind—set, which is if you don't agree with me, you're going to get ruined, destroyed. and how can that be right in a democracy? one thing people may not know about you is that you were raised a catholic. do you still pray? i do.

at particular times? yeah. i mean, probably like everybody else, when i feel like i need a prayer. what do you feel most guilty about? guilty about? erm, not a lot. not a lot. i've always tried to do the right thing. i've come up short a few times like everybody. i don't believe in looking back too much or being too regretful about things. i do believe in learning from things. i do believe in evolving. what do you regret most in life? i don't really regret stuff. people often ask me that and ijust think regret is a wasted energy. there's nothing you can do about it. the key thing is you've got to learn from mistakes. always try and be better than you were yesterday. always be a better journalist, a better person. keep working at it, but don't look back too much. you can't change what you've done, but you can change what you do going forward. and you can certainly learn from mistakes. and if you don't, you're an idiot. so no regrets about doing this interview? well, we'll see. i mean, obviously, if you carve me up in the edit, you'll be the biggest regret of my life. piers morgan, thank you for your time. i really appreciate it. good to see you.

hello there. it's been a lovely start to the weekend, really, especially across england and wales where we've had lots of sunshine. so blue skies over these bluebell woods in south wales, in pontypridd. and on the satellite picture you can see the extent of the sunshine that have more cloud for scotland and northern ireland. the weak weather front overhead here, but we've still managed some brighter spells for scotland, northern ireland, england and wales

we had temperatures reaching the low 20s and the warmest spots, the 21.5 there in porthmadog, actually making it the warmest day of the year so far for wales. now over the next few hours we've got another weather front moving in. it's kind of popping up, bringing a bit of heavier rain just for a time to scotland and northern ireland. but then as we get towards dawn, that will tend to start to fizzle away. clear skies for england and wales, allowing temperatures to dip down to around 5 to 8 degrees celsius. so it will be quite a cool start to a sunday morning for england and wales. sunday's chart, we've got a weak weather front that's moving into an area of high pressure. the high pressure will squish the weather front. so not much rain on it really as we head into sunday. it's just this stripe of cloud. so a few spots around. but, generally, although quite cloudy, there'll be some bright weather coming through at times. england and wales again having the best of the weather with plenty of sunshine around, perhaps a bit of cloud developing through the afternoon across east anglia and the southeast. but those temperatures, again,

not bad for the time of year, quite close to average, really, with highs into the upper teens, although 20s, 21, maybe a 22 in the warmest spots. now heading into next week, it's the similar kind of scenario, very weak weather fronts trying to come around the top side of this area of high pressure. so again, you might see an odd bit of rain for scotland and northern ireland, but not much. most of the day will be dry with some sunny spells coming through again. it's england and wales that will have the best of the day's sunshine and we continue to see those temperatures in the warmest spots climbing into the low 20s. now, deeper into next week, the jet stream takes this kind of pattern, get a ridge over the uk, so high pressure is going to be close by. these troughs around southern europe will ensure that we continue to see heavy thundery showers across southern europe, which is quite unusual really for this time of the year. so here's the forecast in a bit more detail. over the next several days, you can see the extent of the dry weather we'll have with temperatures again holding for the most part at around 18 to 21 degrees celsius. so some fine weather next week.

kick live from washington, kick this is bbc news. ukraine dominates the g7 summit as president zelensky arrives in hiroshima to meet world leaders. the celebrated british author, martin amis, has died at the age of 73. and in sport — manchester city win the premier league for the third year in a row. hello. we start at the g7 summit injapan, where a surprise guest has stolen the spotlight — ukrainian president volodymyr zelensky. he touched down in hiroshima to meet

with g7 leaders in an effort to drum up support and weapons for an expected